Free Republic

LONDON (Reuters) - In recent weeks Russia has stepped up supplies of military gear to Syria, including armored vehicles, drones and guided bombs, boosting President Bashar al-Assad just as rebel infighting has weakened the insurgency against him, sources with knowledge of the deliveries say. Moscow, which is trying to raise its diplomatic and economic influence in the Middle East, has been a major provider of conventional weapons to Syria, giving Assad crucial support during the three-year civil war and blocking wider Western attempts to punish him with sanctions for the use of force against civilians. The new Russian supplies come...

 Hmmm.... What will happen if the Arabs start thinking for themselves? Labels: Arab backwardness, Arab world, flotilla, Gaza, Syria

Islamist rebels have captured the headquarters of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not clear what had happened to the jihadists who had been at the hospital in the Qadi Askar district. Inside, the rebels found dozens of prisoners and the bodies of several men who appeared to have been executed. Recent days have seen fierce fighting between ISIS and other rebel groups.

BEIRUT — On Dec. 20, 2013, Molhem Barakat took his last picture of the Syrian war. He had been photographing a battle for control of Aleppo's al-Kindi Hospital when he was killed along with his older brother Mustafa, a fighter in a local rebel brigade. Barakat's cameras, apparently provided to him by the news agency Reuters, were photographed covered in blood in the aftermath of the attack. Barakat was just 18 when he died, but his images -- transmitted through the Reuters photo service -- gave people across the globe a glimpse into his world, and his country's war. But...

Up to 600,000 of Syria’s 2.2 million Christians have fled their homes and are now either refugees or internally displaced persons, according to Aid to the Church in Need. In all, 1.8 million Syrians have left their homes, the charity reported. “The number of Christians killed because they are targeted for their faith is growing,” said Father Andrzej Halemba, the charity’s Middle East projects coordinator. Referring to an October massacre, the priest said that “Sadad is a very clear case. They were slaughtered like animals.”

The Lebanese army fired anti-aircraft missiles at two Syrian warplanes that bombed a border area close to the Lebanese town of Arsal, officials said. It is the first time since the Syrian conflict began that Lebanon has moved to prevent Syrian planes from violating its airspace.

Talk to any Syrian you meet on the Syrian-Turkish border these days, and in less than five minutes the conversation is likely to turn to Da’ash—the Arabic acronym for the rebel organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or ISIS. Linked to al-Qaeda, the fearsome group has swept across northern Syria, imposing sharia law, detaining and even beheading Syrians who don’t conform to its purist vision of Islam, and waging war on rival militias. In early December, the group killed a foreign journalist, Iraqi cameraman Yasser Faisal al-Joumali, who was reporting in northern Syria. Even using...

The world media is increasingly losing interest in the foreign-fueled war still raging in Syria between the Assad regime and an assortment of Islamist rebel groups backed by the Obama administration, Sunni Arab dictators, and European powers. For embattled Syrian Christians, though — most of whom tried to stay out of the conflict — reports suggest the situation is deteriorating quickly, with over 1,200 documented murders so far, and almost 500,000 forced to flee their homes to escape the escalating violence and ruthless persecution. The real numbers are probably even worse. Experts say the end goal of many jihadist rebel...

In October Christians erected a towering Christ statue at the Cherubim Monastery in the community of Saidnaya, Syria. The statue is taller than the Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.The statue can be seen from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. The height of the bronze statue is 39 m together with the plinth, which is taller than the statue of the Christ in Rio de Janeiro (38 m). One can see the sculpture from Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. (Public Radio of Armenia)This past week Islamists attacked the monastery and fired on the towering statue.Islamists Attack Ancient Convent in Saidnaya...

Islamist rebels killed at least 15 civilians from the minority Alawite and Druze sects in the central Syrian city of Adra on Wednesday and Thursday, the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Recent videos posted on the internet show Palestinian militants doing target practice with rifles and training to storm buildings while Islamic music plays. They come from the Gaza Strip, where Islamist groups are committed to armed struggle with Israel. But the fighters in this footage are different. They joined rebel forces in Syria's civil war. Earlier this year, Fahd al-Habash from Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp recorded a message asking his family not to mourn him if he died. "If you hear that I have been killed and left this world, rejoice for me because I got what I wished for,"...

BEIRUT — The U.S. government has suspended deliveries of aid to Syrian rebels after an Islamist group overran the main warehouses where the supplies were stored, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday. The cluster of warehouses in the northern Syrian town of Atmeh served as the chief conduit for supplies into Syria for the Supreme Military Council, the Western-backed body that oversees moderate rebel factions fighting in Syria. At the time of the takeover, the warehouses contained U.S.-supplied food, medical kits, some communications equipment and several pick-up trucks, typical of the items the United States is sending under a $16.9...

DAMASCUS, Syria — In a terrace cafe within earshot of army artillery, a 28-year-old graduate student wept as she confessed that she had stopped planning antigovernment protests and delivering medical supplies to rebel-held towns. Khaled, 33, a former protester who fled Damascus after being tortured and fired from his bank post, quit his job in Turkey with the exile opposition, disillusioned and saying that he wished the uprising “had never happened.” In the Syrian city of Homs, a rebel fighter, Abu Firas, 30, recently put down the gun his wife had sold her jewelry to buy, disgusted with his commanders,...

You’ve heard of Mad Cow Disease, the scientific name of which is bovine spongiform encephalopathy — a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs). TSE is an incurable fatal disease that affects the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans. Autopsies of infected brain tissue show a myriad of tiny holes in the cortex, giving it a sponge-like appearance — hence spongiform. (See below) spongy TSE-infected brain tissueThe disorder causes impairment of brain and bodily functions, including memory changes, personality changes, and problems with movement (shaking, trembling) that worsen over time. Like all TSEs, the bovine variant is...

When a false-flag atrocity occurs of which Muslims are the purported victims, the United States goes to war to save them—the January 1999 stage-managed “massacre” at Račak, in Kosovo, being a classic example. When all-too-real massacres of Christians by Muslims take place, they are unreported in the Western media and uncommented upon by Western politicians.“Slaughter in Syria: 45 Christians Killed by Islamists in Sadad and Thrown into Mass Graves,” CatholicOnline reported on November 5. The facts of the case are obvious from the rebels’ own shockingly gruesome footage ( here with English subtitles ) and from the government forces’...

Jerusalem considers administration’s confirmation of Israeli air attack on missile stores to be ‘scandalous’; TV analyst warns US risks starting ‘major flare-up’

Israeli military forces destroyed a cache of Russian missiles that the Syrian government was reportedly prepared to deliver to the militant group Hezbollah, U.S. officials confirmed Thursday. The officials stressed that the surface-to-surface Russian-made missiles were under Syrian military control in a stockpile at a port near the Russian naval base at Latakia. The officials said this attack is expected to follow the usual pattern of several other Israeli strikes against Syrian missiles that were apparently on their way to Hezbollah – neither the Israelis, Syrians nor Hezbollah are likely to acknowledge the missiles ever existed or the strike ever...

Israeli warplanes conducted an airstrike early today on a Syrian military facility near the northern Syrian port city of Latakia along the Mediterranean coast, a U.S. official confirms to ABC News. The attack is believed to be the fifth airstrike conducted by Israel inside Syria this year. Like the earlier airstrikes, the official said the latest attack presumably targeted advanced Russian missile weapons systems headed to the extremist group Hezbollah based in Lebanon. An Israeli source also confirmed the attack to ABC News which like the four previous attacks this year has not been acknowledged by the Israeli government. The...

U.S. officials have confirmed that Israel struck Syrian missile sites in two different locations Thursday, reports CNN. The sites, one in the port city of Latakia and another in Damascus, allegedly contained surface to air missile systems said to be slated for delivery to Hezbollah in Lebanon.The strikes took out SA-8 anti-aircraft missiles, The Times of Israel reports. The SA-8 system is a truck-mounted, and highly mobile, but with low-altitude and short range capabilities.The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post, citing satellite images obtained by Channel 2, reports that Russian-made Neva S-125 surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles and SA-3 missile battery — which also includes a...

(CNN) -- Israeli warplanes struck a military base near the Syrian port city of Latakia on Thursday, an Obama administration official told CNN. An explosion at a missile storage site in the area was widely reported in the Israeli press, but an attack has not been confirmed by the Israeli government. The target, according to the Obama administration official, was missiles and related equipment the Israelis felt might be transferred to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. The official declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. When asked for comment, an Israel Defense Forces spokeswoman told...